


Questions of Character

by Sixthlight



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Conversations, M/M, Magic Made Them Do It, Mildly Dubious Consent, insomuch as I am capable of writing angst, undercover kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 11:06:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8283682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: I’m embarrassed to admit that it wasn’t Nightingale kissing me, that night, that made me realise there was something seriously wrong.





	

 

I’m embarrassed to admit that it wasn’t Nightingale kissing me, that night, that made me realise there was something seriously wrong. Whatever it was, exactly, that was influencing us – _vestigia_ or glamour or ghosts for all I knew right then – it had me much too firmly in its grip for that.

I remember being surprised, sure, but in a distant sort of way. A ‘now, really?’ way. And even that faded after a second or two. He didn’t dive in but he wasn’t hesitant about it, and I was actively participating in proceedings almost immediately. Like I said. Whatever it was, it was strong.

Then it was just physical sensations. The surprisingly wiry strength of Nightingale’s upper arm through the layers of his suit, where I reflexively clutched it. The cool draft against the back of my neck that made it seem perfectly logical to press up against the long warm line of him. The sweet hot taste of his mouth. The flush of wanting as sudden and strong as the bass line of a song that comes on half-way through. There was a muted _thunk_ as the back of his head made contact with the bricks behind him, and I wondered for a vague second if that might’ve hurt. Except then he worked his leg in between mine, and the press of my rapidly hardening cock against his thigh, and also the noise he made against my mouth, put paid to wondering about much. I clutched at his arse as he ground up against my hip, and I hadn’t had this much fun fully-clothed since I was fifteen.

What did snap me out of it – and I realise exactly how ridiculous this is – was the thought, _wait, I don’t know what I’m doing, is that worth mentioning?_  

I managed to disengage, at least from a lip-related perspective. Nightingale clearly thought I was stopping to breathe, which was admittedly a secondary consideration. He swiped his tongue across his lower lip. I lost my train of semi-rational thought entirely, but I’d started speaking before it derailed, and what I said aloud was “Wait.”

Seriously powerful magical compulsion or not, he did. We blinked at each other for a couple of seconds. He still had his hand cupped around the back of my head, on the brink of pulling me back in. My pulse was pounding. I tried to will the blood back into my brain. Wait. I’d said wait. Why had I said that? I had Nightingale pressed up against the wall, and it felt _fantastic_ , and –

“Peter?” he said, voice low in a way that wasn’t helping at all, but also – worried. He was worried. We’d come here because he was worried –

“Something,” I managed, “is a bit wrong here.”

His hand dropped away from the back of my head. I moved my hand upwards to rest on his lower back. Things were – with an effort – coming into focus.

We were in the undercroft of a manor house turned museum in Dagenham. It was ten o’clock on a Wednesday night. The museum staff thought teenagers were breaking in and causing trouble at night, Nightingale thought it might be something slightly more problematic than that, and I was realising I’d come _this close_ to making it with my boss up against one of the square brick pillars holding up the floor of the house above us. In fact, depending on how carefully we disengaged, I still might.

I removed my hands fully from his person. The one I’d had on his arm had migrated back without my permission. He did the same thing, pulled his leg away, and stood up a bit straighter. I took a step back. I was so hard it was awkward. So was he, ruining the clean lines of his suit trousers. I dragged my eyes up and concentrated, not on his face, because that wasn’t going to end well, but the bricks to one side of it. The manor house had been extensively renovated since it was first built, but this section was definitely medieval. I wondered if it dated all the way back to the fourteenth century.

I took another step back, because even architecture wasn’t helping much.

“I think,” Nightingale said – his expression was carefully neutral, but he licked his lips again, and shit, _shit,_ I thought really hard about bricks – “that there’s certainly something supernatural going on here.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. My voice came out rough. I saw Nightingale’s eyes tracking my mouth. “Do you think maybe we should go talk about what it might be outside?”

“I think that’s an excellent idea.” Nightingale seemed to be having an easier time keeping his voice level than I was. He was still slouched back a little against the pillar, though, a pose I absolutely did not want to think of as provocative. There was some grey brick dust on the shoulder of his jacket and I almost went to brush it off, but managed to pull my hand back. That wouldn’t have ended well. Not in the long run, anyway, the long run being anything past about three minutes.

“You’ve got some,” I said, and brushed at my own shoulder in demonstration. He brushed it off, straightened his cuffs, and did up the buttons of his jacket.

“Let’s get on with it, then, we haven’t got all night,” he said, only a little snappishly. Nightingale doesn’t snap unless he’s very worried, or very afraid.

“Yes, sir,” I said, hoping that would help get my brain back onto more professional ground.

It really didn’t. I felt Nightingale’s gaze on the back of my neck the whole way up the stairs and out.

*

By the time we got back to the car, walking wasn’t a problem anymore, and I felt simultaneously cold and overheated and criminally idiotic. It’s not like I don’t know what it feels like when my hindbrain is reacting to something magical; it’s not like I’m not capable of separating it from what the rest of my brain actually wants. But whatever that had been had circumvented my brain entirely.

“I don’t remember the curator mentioning anything about _that_ ,” I said, as we stopped by the car.

“I don’t think he would have,” Nightingale said. His voice was still a little hoarse, or was that my imagination? Had to be. “But there are records of – this sort of thing. Not here, other places.”

“Great.” I thought about what the curator _had_ reported, noise and stuff moving around and the feeling of being watched. There were a couple of ghost stories associated with this place, but nothing like this. “So – a ghost, do you think? Are we going to have to dig somebody’s bones up and grind them into dust?” Which is way more tedious than it sounds, may I add.

“I’m not sure yet.” Nightingale frowned. “At least it’s not immediately dangerous to the public.”

“Except for the potential for causing people to commit sexual assault, I guess not,” I said.

Nightingale went very, very quiet, the quiet you go when your mind has frozen.

“I don’t think you,” I said, stumbling over my words. “Or I. Or. We’re not, that wasn’t – _shit_.”

“You’re quite right, though,” he said, and I thought, what if that was _me_ , what if it was all my fault, and he’s being _kind_.

Through an immense effort of willpower, I did not bury my face in my hands, but I did lean my elbows on the Jag and stare past Nightingale to the dark silhouette of an impressive oak tree in the middle distance. The oak tree was unlikely to make me say anything stupid. More stupid. “I would like to start this conversation again from the beginning.”

“I think we were getting somewhere useful for the first half.”

“Okay, yeah.” I managed to look back at him. He didn’t look upset. Then again, he rarely does. “Right, haunting, making people do things they – wouldn’t otherwise do, it’s a pretty strong effect, so what’s powering it?”

“Good question.” Nightingale rubbed his forehead. “We need to look for anything that’s changed, anything that’s been recently damaged or replaced…”

“I know that,” I said, and maybe I was feeling a bit snappish too. We went to look around the main galleries and gift shop. We hadn’t noticed anything until we got into the undercroft.

We found it in the ground-floor gallery, near some somewhat incongruous whale jawbones. I wondered what they were doing here, but even I knew this wasn’t really the time to stop and read irrelevant plaques. And then I spotted a relevant one by an empty case.

“Section of an early modern maypole,” I read aloud. “Currently undergoing cleaning and preparation for display. Want to bet they’re keeping it somewhere in the basement?”

“That’s not a problem.” Nightingale brightened. “Just a standard exorcism, to disperse the foci. It’s probably not even a ghost, not really; just a force.”

“I still wonder why there haven’t been any other reports of…” I tried to think of a good way to finish that sentence. “People getting carried away, like that, specifically?”

“The more aware you are of magic, the more likely you are to be affected directly.” Nightingale’s voice slid abruptly from explanatory to evasive. “Which probably explains…anyway.”

I wondered what would have happened if I’d gone down there with somebody else, somebody who wasn’t a wizard – Lesley, years ago, or Sahra Guleed, or Jaget Kumar? Much worse, Abigail, when she’d been younger and hunting for ghosts? I didn’t want to think about that. It made my stomach turn over. It was just good luck this was a thing Nightingale had decided we should check out together, although it would have been better luck if one of us had gone alone.

I didn’t know why it seemed easier that it had been Nightingale. It just did. He wouldn’t make more of it than it was.

“We’ve got to go back down there at some point,” I said. “Give this exorcism thing ago. Might as well be now.”

“We could come back tomorrow, before they open.”

“It’s not going to be a problem twice, if we know about it.” I knew I sounded terse, and I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t even sure _why_ I thought it wasn’t, except that magic rarely works on you the same way if you know what’s coming. We’d both be prepared.

“This sort of influence,” Nightingale said, cautiously. “It can make one do things that are – out of character.” Oh, god, this was the _I don’t think of you that way_ speech; like I needed it. But then he went on, “You needn’t worry it reflects on you personally.”

“It wasn’t out of character, it was just stupid,” I replied before I could think better of it. Because it was; it’s not like I’ve never made out with someone it wasn’t a good idea to start something with before. Or in a public place. Or on the job, technically speaking. “But, I mean, I don’t think _you_ -”

“Let’s just…” Nightingale interrupted me. “Shall we leave it at that?”

I risked a glance at him. We hadn’t put any lights on and it was hard to make out his expression. His hands were relaxed, one casually in his suit pocket, the other on the handle of his cane, but there was tension along the line of his neck.

“Fine by me,” I said.

*

We completed one exorcism, double-time, no mucking around. There were no breaks for making out, unplanned or otherwise. We went back to the Folly. It was fine.

*

Or it would have been fine, except I kept having dreams. No, not the kind of dreams you’re thinking about. I could have dealt with those. The kind of dreams where we were back in that basement, and I kissed Nightingale. In the dreams, he never kissed me, even though that was what had happened in real life. I kissed him, and he pushed me away. Sometimes he looked angry, and sometimes he looked perplexed, and sometimes he just looked disappointed. I’d be on the dusty floor, looking up at him, and then I’d wake up, heart pounding.

Once it started out as the other sort of dream as well, so I woke up turned on _and_ upset. I tried to go back to sleep, but it wasn’t working. I ended up wanking off trying to think about nothing much in particular, but of course I ended up thinking about what _had_ happened in real life, instead. Which I’d been trying not to do.

After that I kept having the other sort of dream, unless I was tired enough to not dream at all.

I wanted to talk about it to somebody, but there wasn’t anybody, really. I gave serious thought to confessing it – well, some of it – well, a _very small_ part of it – to Beverley, who might be sympathetic. But there are things it’s not okay to ask your ex-girlfriend to listen to and “how I was magically coerced into making out with my boss and now I can’t stop thinking about it” was probably on the one of them, along with topics like “how great my new girlfriend is”. I could envision talking to Bev about it in five years, maybe. Or ten. Not right now. And anybody else…there was a short list of people I’d trust with Nightingale’s privacy as well as my own, and none of them seemed right for this.

Also, there was a chance Beverley might think it was funny, and I didn’t think I could cope with that. Even if I didn’t dream, I was waking up every morning with something boiling under my skin, and I didn’t know what. It led to a lot of time in the firing range, and the gym. I think I was doing an okay job keeping it in otherwise. Nightingale didn’t say anything, or send me out on any of the weird little side-jobs he finds for me when he thinks I’m upset, the ones with a lot less policing and a lot more magic.

But I didn’t see much of him, either, outside of when I had to. These days we didn’t have lessons so much as weekly catch-ups, when I’d demonstrate what I’d been doing and he’d suggest stuff to read or try. Sometimes we’d just talk about magic. That week we didn’t have any active cases – or no new ones – and I barely saw him except for meals. Once he missed dinner. Molly got very upset, even though he left a message. Actually she was upset the whole time. I knew because she reverted to some of her old recipes. They were perfectly executed and lard featured a great deal less than it had the first year I lived here, but there was still enough mashed potato to drown in.

She kept giving me significant glances, but there was _no way_ I was explaining what had happened to her. Just no way. I would have taken Toby for a lot of long walks by way of getting away and pacifying her, but he doesn’t get very far from the kitchen these days – I don’t know how old he was when we got him but he’s thirteen or fourteen at least. The dog years thing is bollocks but that’s good going for a dog, any way you count it. He’d earned sleeping in front of Molly’s big cast-iron stove.

I knew Nightingale was avoiding me and I didn’t know how I felt about it. I wanted us to just pretend last Wednesday had never happened. I wanted him to apologise, even though there wasn’t anything for him to apologise for, anything I hadn’t done too. I didn’t want an apology; I wanted him to kiss me again, to press him up against one of the walls of the Folly, or maybe, getting well ahead of myself, a bed. I wanted to know it was my idea. Magic isn’t like being drunk. When you’re drunk, if you do things – if you’re in control enough to do things – they’re things you think of; your inhibitions are gone, that’s all. If you hurt someone, you meant it. If you say something, you meant it. You might not have ever done it sober, but the impulse, that’s still on you.

When you’re possessed, or influenced, or haunted – you can do things you’d never have done in a million years. Try to kill yourself; try to kill other people; kiss your apprentice; make out with your boss. Things that aren’t you. Or sometimes you _do_ just do things you’d have done anyway. I know the difference. I’ve had both happen. The trick, usually, is that once the magic goes away – or before, if you’re paying attention – you can feel how foreign the thoughts are, the ones that aren’t yours. It’s an impulse that belongs to somebody else.  

But when I thought about what had happened with me and Nightingale, when I dreamed it, it didn’t feel foreign; it felt like something from inside me. Only now I was never going to know if I would have had that thought on my own. And I wanted to have had that choice.

There was this, too: I didn’t know what _Nightingale_ thought. Whether we’d gotten out and it had felt foreign to him, whatever urge had come over him when he’d kissed me. The null hypothesis, of course, was that it hadn’t been him, not any of it, and that was why he was avoiding me.

Sometimes I almost understood how someone like Seawoll felt about magic.  

*

“I want to apologise,” I said. Nightingale’s pencil stopped moving, mid-word. “For what?”

It was Sunday, ten days later. As if through some mysterious sixth sense – actually it wasn’t mysterious, it was probably Molly – Beverley had invited me to brunch. She hadn’t asked any really difficult questions, but she’d eyed me critically when I’d sat down.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Nope,” I’d said.

“Okay,” she’d replied, and hadn’t pushed. Nobody’s ever going to accuse Beverley of being a gossip. Professionally this is often frustrating, but personally it’s only sometimes frustrating. Instead I’d been treated to a lengthy explanation of catchment issues, and also some technical complaints about nitrate levels which my chemistry was just good enough to keep up with. Took my mind off things.

It was nice of her.  

I’d been vague about how long I was going to be out, so when I’d slipped quietly in the back door in the early afternoon it hadn’t been hard to find Nightingale doing the crossword, as was often his custom on Sundays after lunch. Last week he’d done it somewhere I hadn’t been able to find him; possibly even in his room. Today he wasn’t expecting me. Which was why he froze when I appeared in front of him and offered to apologise.

“You know what for,” I said. I didn’t sit down. It felt better not to. Also, it was going to be much easier to flee.

“That’s…” Nightingale looked up at me for the first time. “Really not necessary.”

“You’ve been avoiding me all week,” I said. “I kind of think it is.”

“Will you sit down?” he said. I took the chair opposite him.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I should’ve known something was up sooner. The other night.”

“I think we need to talk about this,” said Nightingale.

“I think I’d rather not,” I said. “Can you just say ‘apology accepted’ and then we let it go at that?”

“You didn’t…you didn’t do anything to apologise for,” he said. “I know that’s not…it’s not something you’d…it was the magical influence we were dealing with.”

“Yeah, but,” I said. “Same goes for you.”

His eyes widened very slightly, and I realised I should have said that a week ago. Ten days ago.

“But you were the one who managed to say stop,” he said, then clamped his mouth shut like he hadn’t meant to say it.

“I wasn’t saying _stop_ ,” I blurted out, “I was going to say I –” and then my brain managed to catch up with my mouth, because that was a sentence I _really_ didn’t want to finish.

“Oh,” said Nightingale, and we stared helplessly at each other. Winter sunlight was streaming into the reading room, and it made his eyes look a much lighter grey than they normally did, I noticed.

“And then once I had, I realised we were…” I waved a hand. “Getting off-topic?”

“I…see.”

I was wrong; I should have just let him avoid me for however long he wanted to. That would have been a lot better than sitting here in this stupid armchair while we both groped – bad choice of word – looked for a way to get out of this conversation.

“So.” It took willpower not to stand up as I was speaking. “Are we okay?”

Nightingale took a deep breath. “Yes, I – thank you.”

“For _what_?”

He looked me in the eye. “Trying to set things right. I _was_ avoiding you. I shouldn’t have been. And I apologise, too. I should have – I owed you that a lot sooner than this.”

“Right. No problem.”

I did flee, after that, but I don’t think anybody could have blamed me. It had come to me, all of a sudden, that I’d been hoping apologising might somehow clear the way for me to – try again wasn’t even the right phrase. Try it on wasn’t, either. Try to see if it had been something in my head, after all, or better yet both our heads.

But after all that I couldn’t spend the next while avoiding _him_ while I got my own head straight, so I was just going to have to get over it.

*

My plan of just forgetting all about it worked spectacularly well – or at least well enough that I was congratulating myself on it – right up until I went to stake out a building in Soho and found myself ducking back into the shadow of some scaffolding with Nightingale at two in the morning, trying not to look suspicious. Our suspect was headed this way and in a minute, if we didn’t do something, we’d be spotted.

Kissing your partner in crime – or police work – is a time-honored fictional method of avoiding attention while undertaking surveillance, on the theory that it makes people uncomfortable and so they look away and fail to recognise you. There are a couple of problems with this. Firstly, there’s always somebody willing to gawp or cat-call; you don’t know if the person you’re running surveillance on is one of those people. Secondly, it’s difficult to keep an eye on your surroundings and kiss somebody, at least if you’re trying to look convincingly lost in passion. Thirdly, if they do clock you anyway, it’s just going to be hideously embarrassing. As for the post-watershed version of this technique – there are things you don’t do with people you work with, at least not without a serious discussion first and some laying down of boundaries, and also possibly these days an HR seminar.

Fourthly, if you’re me and Nightingale, there’s even odds somebody’s going to start yelling about the children and so on. Or more likely in Soho at two in the morning, offer to join in, making it the exact opposite of a surreptitious method of avoiding detection. Not that, prior to this, I had ever considered trying it.

This is why, although we did turn to face each other, there was no question of dramatic lip action. Nightingale stepped up close to me and turned his face in; I looked down, like we were talking, but kept my eyes on the main footpath. Hopefully it looked like a drug deal or something else you wouldn’t want to interrupt. Nightingale’s good coat and my jeans probably lent credence to this – I’d dressed to avoid attention when I came out but I don’t think Nightingale was physically capable of dressing down that much. He’d been about to trade off with me.  

“Anything yet?” Nightingale said quietly.

“No,” I replied. He was so close I could feel the warmth of his breathing; it was a cold night, and we were both misting the air when we spoke. I could feel the warmth of the rest of him, too, and it was an effort not to shuffle closer. I was so close already, I could see his lower lip was a little chapped. I tried to keep my thoughts professional. It hadn’t been this difficult, before.

“If she doesn’t we could just…”

“Paperwork,” I said, not wanting to use the word _warrant_ out loud. I was absolutely sure that if we went in with anything less than a very good excuse – danger to life and limb, etcetera – or a correctly drawn-up warrant, then the Met would be tied up in lawsuits for months, not to mention there’d be nothing that could go to court. That was why I was skulking around out here in the first place; we needed to get eyes on our suspect going into the building, which she had no good reason to do.

Nightingale did not roll his eyes, but I think it was a near thing. That wasn’t what made me bite down on a grin; it was that he said “Yes, alright.”

Then there was the distinct noise of footsteps, and I ducked my head a bit more, just keeping watch out of the corner of my eye, and Nightingale angled his body around so his back was to the footpath, relying on me to keep an eye out. Our suspect strode impatiently by, right across the road from us. Her face was creased into a frown. She didn’t even really glance our way, beyond a quick check. A woman by herself at this time of night; almost certainly a practitioner like we suspected, or possessed of some other reason for confidence. Two guys lurking would draw a longer look than that, otherwise, maybe have her speeding up her stride. 

I gave Nightingale the faintest of nods. We waited a moment longer. There was the noise of keys, a door opening; then it shut again. I saw her enter the building.

We waited. Nothing. I was trying to calculate if it would be more suspicious if we moved further away or stayed here.

Nightingale said something so quietly I couldn’t make it out, so I tucked my head even closer and said “what?” My lips brushed against his cheek, purely a function of distance. My eyes had drifted away from the building across the road, and then there was another noise, as unto a door re-opening.

I think somebody panicked. This is the only rational explanation for how Nightingale and I came to be kissing next to a skip in Soho in the witching hour.  

It wasn’t at all like the other night in the museum basement; I wasn’t feeling the urge to climb him like a tree then and there, although it was there somewhere, low in my stomach. My mind felt clear. What _was_ like was how warm he was, and how his body felt when we closed the remaining fraction of distance. It was the kind of kiss where you want to go for more but can’t just then, and every point you’re touching reminds you what you aren’t doing. Footsteps went past, and I thought _it’d just be_ really _suspicious if we stopped now_ , so I didn’t. And he didn’t.

Nightingale pulled away first this time, a little pink-cheeked, I thought, but that was probably the cold. I thought: _I know I was the one doing that but I still don’t know what the hell I was doing._

We got back to the Folly about three in the morning.

“Look,” I said as we were taking off our coats. “Sorry about that. I think I panicked about being caught.”

Nightingale paused with both arms trapped behind his back, staring at me incredulously. “For – you think that was _your_ fault?”

At least he hadn’t pretended not to know what I was talking about.

“Well it’s not like you were going along with it because you’re harbouring some deep-seated desire to get in my trousers,” I said, which only goes to show how functional my brain is in the wee hours.

Nightingale didn’t say anything, but he was starting to acquire a certain flush around the jawline – it’s very hard to not blush when you’re that pale – and he still had his arms trapped behind him, in the sleeves of his coat. I wanted to ask if he needed some help with it, but that was either going to come out like the worst come-on line in history or like I was trying to be cruel.

I was getting tired of this thing where we stared speechlessly at each other, though.

“I…think I may have given you the wrong impression,” he said finally.

“No, I said I _didn’t_ think you were -” I started, and then “Oh.”

And then, because after all it was getting on for three in the morning and my self-control had gone out the window, or been left behind in a haunted museum basement, I said “Do you need some help with that?”

It did the job; Nightingale snorted, and finished taking his coat off. I was only slightly disappointed. I tucked my hands into my pockets, and tried to think calm thoughts.

“Did you really spend all that time thinking…” he trailed off as he hung the coat up.

“I wouldn’t want to assume your actions under the influence of a haunting reflected on you personally,” I said. 

“Ah,” said Nightingale. “Quite.”

“On the other hand, assuming they _do_ ,” I said, pulling my hands out of my pockets, and reached out to turn his face towards me. He let me. And then he let me kiss him. In fact, he leaned into it with the ghost – not a literal one, thank you – of our hunger from the other night. I pressed him back against the soft barrier of our winter coats hanging on their hooks. Perhaps due to how tired I was, all the memories I’d been trying not to have, the ones that had come creeping out in my dreams, were immediately there. What it had felt like, what it had sounded like, the knife-edge of arousal I’d been on, the jolt when I’d felt him ride up against my leg of realising how much I wanted to get him off as well as myself.

But it wasn’t the bewildering fog this time, I knew who I was and where we were. This was all mine, the heat of his mouth and the fizz up my spine when he reached to pull me closer, this was all ours, this, this, _this_.

“I really feel,” Nightingale said when I broke off to mouth my way up the line of his jaw, “since you – mmm - seem to have had the wrong impression all this time, that I should make it up to you.”

“You sure that’s how you want to phrase that?” I asked. Or more accurately murmured.

“Yes,” Nightingale said thoughtfully, as he equally thoughtfully got his hand down the back of my jeans, the contents of which he _was_ apparently interested in. “I think that’s exactly how I meant to phrase that.”

“Well,” I said, and lost my train of thought when he bit very gently at the base of my throat. I rocked my hips against him almost involuntarily. “That’s a very open offer.”

“Feel free to come up with some specifics,” he said helpfully, which sounded smug, so I licked into his mouth again and was rewarded with something not unlike a whimper.

“What I was going to say last week was,” I said eventually. “I don’t know exactly what I’m doing.”

“Oh,” said Nightingale, like this was some insight, when he’d been the one going on about _out of character_.

“But…” I’d finally managed to navigate around the minor technicalities of his belt and button fly – honestly, zips were invented before the First World War – and I wrapped my hand around his erection. “How complicated can it be, really?”

Nightingale seemed to be too busy biting his lip and clutching at my arse to respond properly to that, which was quite frankly flattering. There wasn’t a lot of room to work with, but I managed to give it a decent stroke, trying not to yank – I know from personal experience that’s more uncomfortable than arousing.

He shuddered, and it was an effort to not just let go and grind against him until we both tipped over. I stroked up and down again, running my thumb around the head, and he tilted his head back, exposing the line of his throat. I was very tempted to tell him he could make it up to me by letting me pull him off here and now, which was about the point I realised we were still in the back corridor and if we kept making noise Molly might come and investigate – it wasn’t like she really slept. And that was _not_ something either of us wanted.

I did it once more anyway, just to watch Nightingale’s back arch.

“Can we start the making up bit by moving to a bed?” I asked, letting go. Nightingale’s eyes flew open in indignation and then understanding, as I saw it dawn on him exactly what we were doing and where.  

“Yes,” he said, letting go himself. I was nearly as rumpled as he was. We were still swaying into each other, not even trying to keep our hands to ourselves; my skin felt too tight all over. “Yes, I think so.”

“I know how I want to make it up to you now,” was the next thing Nightingale said, once we’d made it to his bedroom and were half-way to having our clothes off. Well, I was half-way; he still had his shirt and trousers on, even if both were open. Then again, he’d started with more layers than me. Also he’d gotten distracted when I’d taken my shirt off. I was not going to complain.

“You’re not going to wait for me to come up with something?” I didn’t mind that much, actually. I could think of half-a-dozen things but I wasn’t operating on enough cylinders to pick one.

“You can next time,” he said, which made my stomach do a flip of anticipation, and steered me back onto the bed. Then he climbed into my lap and kissed me very seriously. This would have gone more smoothly if I hadn’t still been trying to get the rest of my clothes off – not to mention my socks, because I have _some_ standards. He very nicely waited until I was grabbing for my second and last sock before he wriggled off a bit, getting a knee on either side of my legs, and took me in hand.

I forgot all about socks.

By this point I was so hard I was leaking into his hand, a result of all that wriggling around trying to undress with him on top of me, but also blurry with tiredness. I threw an arm his shoulders as the only alternative to flopping back onto the bed. He pulled me off slowly and deliberately, counterpoint to the desperate way we’d undressed. It didn’t take much; I shuddered and gasped and bit at his mouth, coming apart at the seams. When I was done I did just slump backwards, every muscle in my body gone liquid.

I still had one sock on, but Nightingale hadn’t gotten any more undressed and I’d just come all over myself and his hand and one side of his pale blue Italian cotton shirt, so I think I won that one.

“Okay, you made it up,” I said once I had some brain function back. Not a lot; ebbing arousal meant sleep was coming at me like a train, which wasn’t on quite yet. “Come here.” He did, grinning with delight.

I stripped him of the rest of his clothes, muttering at his cufflinks while he laughed, trailing away into a groan as he rocked up into the mess on my stomach. It sent tingling shockwaves when he brushed against my softening cock.  

I could have just let him rub off against me, he seemed pretty single-minded about it, but I had a slightly better idea. I moved up on the bed a bit and guided him between my legs, pressing them together. By now his cock was slippery from my come; that thought was good for another shivery twitch, which made Nightingale _hmmm_ into my mouth. He got the idea immediately. I’d never done this from this end of things before, although the principle was straightforward enough. I was surprised how good it felt, even well within my recovery period, as he thrust between my thighs. I ran a proprietary hand down the length of his back, enjoying the ramping tension I could feel, the way he was as lost in this as I was. He sighed and shuddered and came.

I did actually fall asleep for about ten minutes, but jerked awake when he sagged bonelessly sideways off me – we were already getting dangerously sticky, so that was a good move – and stumbled into his ensuite bathroom to find a flannel. Then we just huddled under the covers, the wet spot being usefully on top of them, and dropped right off into oblivion. There was probably a discussion we should be having, about all sorts of things. I couldn’t have cared less.

We slept right through breakfast and were woken up by Molly knocking on the door to demand that one of us walk Toby – not verbally, of course, but the scratch of Toby’s claws made the request clear. Nightingale was making small snuffling noises into the back of my neck and had my legs and one arm firmly pinned. I really needed a shower. For the first time in nearly two weeks, I felt fantastic.

When I opened the door dressed in yesterday’s clothes and took the lead off Molly, her eyebrows shot up so high they almost vanished under her mob cap, but you know what?

Totally worth it.


End file.
